An early evening gust
broke the back of the day's blaze
Still 90 degrees at eight
in orange haze
Sweat runs down my neck
Through the gorge between my *******
The wind lifts my linen shirt
runs its hands along my sides
reviving memory
of Forest Park
of a blanket in the grass

Where the pines trace
so many faces
Crackling popping kids
stolen matches, running
screaming victorious!
Blowing tin cans up with fire crackers
Bicycles, sparklers, fireworks at dusk
That whole afternoon
I spent hammering caps

Noise really makes us kids
really
especially
annoying

Mom wants us out!
Gone! All of us!
No needs. No excuses!
No cookies! No slices of bologna!
“No more Kool Aid!
Out now!
Out!”

That evening I tried
to dismiss the itchy sweat
of stupid-sister-Suzy-matching-sun-suits
at Gino's family picnic
When some kid
(I don't know?)
between the rigatoni and the sweet corn
Some kid
tosses a sparkler
into box of fireworks
I don't know?
whether to cry or laugh
I was pretty scared
Rockets going off across the lawn
and onto porch
Craze of colors through the trees
Some at eye-level horror!
But the sight of Aunt Nedda
diving under picnic table
Stockings, garter belt upended
Capsized beyond her caring
of uplifted dress

Some images just stay with you, ya know?

July 4th always lands for me
on a firework's ***

here's how it happens
the morning after
you reach into the drawer
where the your t-shirts live
to find it austere
you'll shrug because
you're still drunk
& you can't remember
when last it was
that you had something wet
or how long it's been
since you made the floorboards blush
or why the carpet is upset
who wouldn't be
the contents to the upended ashtray
strewn around the apartment
resemble the aftermath
of the smallest war
to ever take place in norfolk
some midnight thief
must've made off with the lighter
because it isn't in
any of your favorite spots
maybe you chucked it
along with a hundred other things
that make noise when they land
in the neighbors yard
you won't remember putting
the refrigerator's belongings
in the bathtub
or scrawling a buzzard
on the bedroom door
but then again who would
you'll pretend it's spring again
before putting on your winter coat
to go out front with a cigarette
in your mouth
you'll hope for a passing stranger
to *** a light from
or drag yourself to the corner
with couch cushion change
to buy a new lighter
and on your way
you won't bother looking back
this is just another day
on eggshells for no reason
another november
choking on birthday candles
on your way home
you step over beer cans
the kind you fell in love with
and wonder who
had the last laugh last night
or if anyone said a word at all
it might've been another
moment of clarity
it might have been some idiot savant
any adjective that feels like home
anything that keeps you thirsty

<Loud as you can say it>
I am Outlaw!
         -call me Pirate!
I live such freedom,
         all souls admire it!
The awful God,
        has judged my soul,
Weighs his measure,
          I'll pay my toll!

<In a high-pitched voice>
The sailor's way,
        path unknown,
Stars are clouded,
        nothing shown?
The sea's are high,
        a storm is here,
Davey Jones' Locker,
        my home is near.

<Loud again, yell it>
There is no heaven,
        there is no hell,
Life on seas,
        the seas they swell,
Fish scales on arms,
         scales on my legs,
Heart born free,
         dread-locked and dregs!

I am Outlaw!
          -call me Pirate!
Lost lives redeemed,
          some should admire it,
The ship upended,
          all hands to drown,
In Davey Jones' Locker,
          a peaceful sound...

<In a high-pitched voice>
The sailor's way,
        path unknown,
Stars are clouded,
        nothing shown?
My time has ended,
        fate is near,
Davey Jones' Locker,
        my death is here.

<Loud again, yell it>
I am Outlaw!
         -call me Pirate!
A man of valor,
          some do admire it.

I am Outlaw!
          -call me Pirate!
A dreadful life,
           though some desire it.

I am Outlaw!
          -call me Pirate!
To Davey Jones' Locker,
          my deeds require it.

I am Outlaw!
          -call me Pirate!

I AM OUTLAW!
          -CALL ME PIRATE!

I am Outlaw!!
          -call me Pirate!
My life on the ocean,
          my God inside it.

Sky has fallen on your head, Earth erupting has upended you into two, is it time for change yet?


Everyone knows the extinction's coming, racing towards US from our future,

Seen on the horizon, still, no talk of evolution, adapting to reality,

Not the worldly world of criminal insanity?  Non-republican caucasian

Newborns to men who are heterosexual are still neutered as newborns,

Mutilated as toddlers, kids, mass-*****, and every crime done against them

As kids and teens, yet the Roman Catholic Empire doesn't even acknowledge

Their inquisition against them, let alone slow it down, stop it.  How is

It that Pope Benedict (Arnold, the Rat...), the last inquisitor, hasn't

Been prosecuted in the ICC?  Just so you know, if "...we(e),..." don't

Uninstall RumputiN/vlad-the-impaler from the Blackhouse by 1-21-21, the

United **** of assassins is the new notsee Germany and since it's citizens

Haven't stopped it's Gov't, it must be destroyed at all costs, for life,

Humanity, the Earth, to even exist.  Is impeachment peachy keen now?

Do you feel like keeping it in the ground, abolishing fossil fuel use yet?

She wore a net that covered her hair,
A shawl in a peasant green,
A ragged dress that covered her breast
But with nothing in-between,
Her legs were scratched and covered in mud
And her feet were shod in clogs,
I wouldn’t have noticed her passing, but
For the barking of the dogs.

She looked aside at the dogs that barked
And she made an evil sign,
Sent them panicking back to the barn
And I called, ‘Hey you, they’re mine!’
She looked at me from under the net
With glittering eyes of scorn,
‘Your dogs will not recover themselves
‘Til the Black Beast comes, at dawn!’

I stood agape and I watched her pass
To the shade down by the creek,
She kicked her clogs on the dewy grass
And she washed her legs and feet.
I wandered down and I stood aside,
‘You’re a stranger to these parts!’
‘I’ve been away, but I think I’ll stay
‘Til the Mass of the Woodland starts.’

It wasn’t really a village then,
Was more a scatter of homes,
Built on the edge of the woodland where
The cottagers laid their bones,
The cemetery wandered into the trees
With the headstones, green with moss,
And each was graven beneath the green
With a dark, upended cross.

‘The people here are strange, you know,
They don’t like passers-by,
You’d best be moving along before
The sun sinks in the sky.’
She laughed a terrible laugh that sent
Cold shivers down my back,
‘I’m only here for the sacrifice,
You can tell your Brothers that!’

The people came from the cottages
At dusk in their hoods and capes,
Wandered into the ancient hall
Half hid by its ivy drapes,
They genuflected before the font
With its rust and ****** stains,
That sat before the upended cross
On a wall that was hung with chains.

A man stood tall at the podium
In a hood that hid his face,
I caught a glimpse of the mask he wore,
A skull that he held in place.
‘The ravening beast will be abroad
When the Moon is full and round,
We have to be at the woodland creek
Before the beast comes down.'

He led the way to the woodland creek
Where the girl had sat in wait,
‘I hope you’ve chosen your sacrifice
For the time is getting late.’
A cloud then blotted the moonlight out
And we heard a beastly roar,
The girl had gone when the moon had shone
And her clothes lay on the floor.

And in her place, a hideous beast
As black as a lump of pitch,
Leapt on one of the Brothers there
And dragged him into a ditch.
It mauled and ripped at his carcass there,
He didn’t have time to scream,
While I took off, back to my croft,
Away from the nightmare scene.

I lay in the barn, beside my dogs,
They seemed to be terrified,
I sat and loaded my .22
My eyes were open wide,
The Beast came prowling around at dawn
Just as the girl had said,
I shot it once, and between the eyes
But the girl lay there, instead.

David Lewis Paget

I like slandering your makeshift forceps.
I hammer you down with watery *** and then spill

the remainder on the couch. Yarg! A diamond’s
worth at least a small intestine, and you

are worth whatever’s left over after night
has upended itself, poured sideways out of its

shellacked crawlspace, and turned the basement sour.
There are remnants of you in the park,

some red stain by the baseball field where,
if you’ll remember, you watched little leaguers

build teamwork, and faint splotches on tree bark
from your lactations which, if you’ll remember, happened

every morning. I whisper your godforsaken name
and am slapped in the head. The children cry

when I smile. I cry when the children smile. Good
heavens. I forbid you from not entering my corridor,

even as I set up a barricade. I like my water scalding,
my passion chilled, and I like you in easy-to-

swallow doses. I like you in my eggs.
Ditto the faucet, keyboard, the occasional lily,

but do not mess with my pearls. I mumble of apodictic
meadows while I sleep. What can I say?

I do not mumble of unclogging your bathtub,
which has a certain foul repute, and has grown

heavy and ugly with your hair, which is everywhere,
just as you are everywhere, and wherever, and so

******* hidden it’s not funny anymore, we stopped
looking some millennia ago, after scouring the drainpipes,

kicking down your doors, dissecting your mattress,
speculating about your burial site, etcetera, and even so

we have not been really looking all this time, have we,
just blaring your name through the speakers,

putting wrong numbers on our calling cards, leaving
uncooked meat out on the back porch as if you were

a raccoon, oh, or a lion, which you are not, or not
quite, though, as the books say, you have honey

in your stomach, and if you could but be
ripped open we would taste and see.

She was the only lighthouse in a roiling sea of black

My rowboat upended
As the waves enveloped my screams

Gasping, reaching
As the foamy pitch swallowed me whole

CLANG mourned the lighthouse
Her yellow beam helplessly revolving

CLANG  *CLANG

Who knows what stops the heart of a song
I take note

of tiny thud—
robin in the wheel well of my car

the limp head
of a cat’s prey

sigh of wings
defrocked by power lines

baby starling’s fledgling flight
falling short of a pond’s edge

The slate morsel unearthed
by the tines of my rake

…and the world is vacant for a moment

Grief ***** a womb of air
but how it lives— I cannot say
Upended creature of us

Stops the throbs that herald life

People always complain about political correctness
Unless it's something important to them
Then they expect you to use empathetic indirectness
As to not hurt the feelings of men

I'm a homosexual talking to a stranger
They don't detect this
They say ****** and unleash my anger
They don't expect this
They were expecting me to be socially correct
To their bigoted views
They can't handle it when their hatred reflects
And they're given their due

I can't ask for a simple date
Or mention anything about God
I can't ask for their ****** state
That would imply that they're flawed
Yet they say I'm easily offended
But their argument is upended
When there are many topics I must avoid
Or hedge around
Otherwise they will get easily annoyed
And wear a frown

People say Donald Trump is politically incorrect
But that's not true
He's a hateful *******
People confuse that with political incorrectness
But if about half the people who vote are pieces of ****
Can that really be said to be incorrect?
The idea of the president being politically incorrect is absurd
By virtue of being elected his politics are being endorsed
And endorsement is what comprises political correctness
He may know nothing of governance or diplomacy
But he was correct when it came to politics

I live in a country where I can say pretty much whatever I want
And then everyone else can react however they want
To be angry at someone's reaction is its own political correctness
They're just mad it's not their own specific politics being adhered to

So when people mention political correctness I laugh
It's a defensively reflexive path
When they live an unexamined life
But then complain about their plight
They think they're hated because they're white
They think they're hated because they're right
I dislike them because they have low empathy
So I don't want to be near that
Because their hatred starts to enter me
When they call me a queer ***
Then they expect me to love it
But instead I tell them to shove it
They tell me I'm being politically correct
Maybe it's their own lives they should inspect

Cloudy, 70 degrees Fahrenheit,
Outside on the beach, and inside my head,
Weather, overcast, color and temp., coordinated.

Early risen like some other Jew,
The waves say:

Hey, Hey! Yo, Yo! We're available,
Walk on us and drown your sorrows,
If they're original,  we'll Jonah-spit you back.

Most likely, common enough, and we will
Keep your body, Mr. Word Sailor,
Recompense for suffering your trite insights,
Swallowing whole, you and your appetizer poems nobody reads,
Body and soul buried side by side
In the cemetery's ocean, just one more
Dead Poet to add to the Society,
Our very own collection.

No Thanks, says my pride, still got one more left inside,
Bait taken, gotta catch and release,
Cause I'm an environmentalist,
Or, at least, a plain old mentalist,
Whose words escape his body,
Thru his eyes, ears and fingertips,
Sustainability for a few more days.

Beach walking, my eyes are not deceived,
The shells, the husks, the dead upended,
***** and mollusks have hora-circled me,
Holding hands, they too, dance and sing their
Lamentations, as if I didn't have enough of my own,
To keep myself self-employed.

Look at us, turn not, Sir, disguised by word-stubble,
Face not away from us and our exposed-now, truths.

Upon Silver Beach, we preach,
This our death spot, our crematorium,
Hunted and gull-pecked,
Our shells, teenage broken,
Holed, shucked, stepped upon,
What ignominy for proud sea creatures!
Is this the death we deserve?

Why to me whine, wail and cry,
I, nothing to your deaths, hasten,
Do, did or done,
Though I plied the waters of
Noyack and Little Peconic Bay but yesterday,
Not one of your kind did I disturb,
For your kind,  my God, consuming disallowed.

Take your sad eyed tales to the under-towing waves,
Perhaps, they will listen, for they enjoy containing
Morted objects on their invisible sands,
The waters will take you and your plaints,
Soundlessly, you will be accepted, upon their plains.

No, No!
Instructions sent and well received,
You, poet, are the one, needs notification
Our doom is your doom, symmetry to
Your gloom, for one and the same.

What meanest thou, meanest creatures,
Commonality nor companionship,
Kith nor kin are we!
Our connectivity is but
This beach we presently share!

Guiltless in life, we but survived,
Hurting no one, no thing,
Yet, here we lie, ignored, unattended,
Yet, you fail again to see our connection?
You do not recognize us?

We are the shells, the husks of you,
Your poems unread, you labors unpreserved,
All wasted, for unless they are read, they die,
As you will too.
Some fast, by water, some slower, time-eroded,
All, ended, by drowning in the Sea of Who Cares!

Shell-shellacked, be refted, be reaved,
The be-each minions have crucified my anything,
Truth, the sword for ribbon cutting ceremonies
Risen up from these waters, to cut me down,
To complete my shame, the duo,
Wind and sand combinate to sting my eyes,
But succeed not, for I weep so copiously,
Their endeavors re fused, but what's the point,
For I am a results-oriented man,
My results, naught.

I know now where to go
When the silence external is needing coordination,
UnSound symmetry, with a silenced mind.

5:52 AM
Silver Beach
June 30th, 2013

who re-marrowed this hollow tree ?
thought themselves of mythology ?
processed death into the dying **** ?
blunt   blackened hope
           buttering up what god ?
                                   what mischief maker ?
: Loki the crow with his promethean nose ?

covering his crooked actions
                          the defiling of a life
  murderer
  a coward of failed coupling
congress    a night down the pub
    the gender polar pair collided
            sottish upon their union
genitals bragging through urgent gaps in clothing
but that urgency deflated
it muttered away
he felt baited
and
  humiliated    
             he committed to ******

crude amateur throttling
  a ***** sogged brick  
an indiscreet botch up
    and a stolen wheelbarrow  
        to ferry her away

'The Mourning Tree'
           despondently sifts for nourishment
its gummy combs of branches
  sashing particles  from the night solution
the tree ; a cavity
too verrucose and fleshy to whittle the winds
                                               or fife a tune
a rubbery craggle     foreign against the landscape
should   rather   make out its' habits
                  off the floor of a deep sea trench

roughing in the corpse
head first   down the gullet thirstily
skirts up and claustro
between spread limbs
to ***** puckle in the hollow tree
evicting the bird of Minerva
      ‘whoing’ into the charged sky
  blooded over
             the night blackens further
               brooding on the event

who re-marrowed this hollow tree ?
married themselves to a mythology ?
force fed life   engorged within deathly seed ?
upended crime     in lieu of a sacrifice
           he offered a glass of woman
               to oder the night
he strummed teasing fingers
      raked them humming
         through the heady resistance of the air
electric creeping warmth   over the skin
                        erecting the hairs
   museum silence
   an arena    as fraught equal    between magnets
       clouds cut the moon
      moon cut the eye
    sinful kiting to mend a link
ramblings kinked
he makes sparking incantations to the gods

one scatting madman
one corpse woman


that same bled night
where the furrowed fields
            meets natures disarray
children approach this woodland border             
children with empty baked bean tins
      that they joined with lengths of string
trying to reach out their ears
    extend their timid range
       to sprites, nymphs, pucks or faeries
an older kid strikes up a cigarette
one of the younger ones squats to ***
         and be mocked

one brave girl of ten years
  runs a tin and the line into the woods  
it jerks taunt after about thirty paces
she wedges it in a tree fork and runs back
the children crowd the receiver tin
spooking themselves
eavesdropping   
        upon the hollow wisdom of small gods
            that mask their shame in the dark

There was a young man  in Travancore,
who joined a program to control anger,
The instructor, a sultry, bold miss
suggested, "Let's start with a kiss"
Her stunning  range upended the ******.

Regression is the precedent I've since set for myself
Upended on the shelf was an unfortold, frenetic, belt-pelted being.
So after the cavity in my dominant eye has collapsed
after the day of shooting and rapture has wrapped up
Enough of it has shoved itself up into the upended titled bent being
whose naive native notions can only see the chemical show
of wriggles and lines that've dissolved in the dealing of
chemical knots wrought for that rapture
It's a shot taken in, in little apeture notions
It's showmanship commotion,
Locomotion in sinful, fruit-built, salt-ridden,
and laughter-built ration packs.

A helicopter fashioned
from feathers and fairy dust
buzzed the rioting fuchsia,

Newton's laws upended,
outsmarted,
The ruby-throated flier darted
over and under blossoms,
taking samples
with the lightest touch--
like a visitor from another planet
intending no harm,

then he backed off, surveying,
Lingering in weightlessness,
Suspended in the moment before,
when all is possible,
Poised on the edge of
free fall,
deciding what's next.

Sun comes up,
she goes down
on some upended main drag,
if i were an archaeologist
i still wouldn't dig this place,
every other day she dwells
in tedious, empty cafés,
but on the weekends she flashes
her "license and registration"
to oncoming traffic,
hoping for grifted furlough
to wear as silken, shiny beads,
and so we ride
this merry-go-round,
because moving in circles
is far better than being trapped in a square,
we've stopped climbing the calendar
in search of higher elevation,
she used to pour it on thick,
stirring drinks inside my head,
i used to shake
worries from her hair,
now with bitter orange marmalade
low in the sky, and stacked against us,
it's home before dark,
lest our eyes open wide to see
we are nothing more
but strangers at sundown.

He shuffles in as 7:12 precisely.
The girl is always there, and greets him nicely
With a knowing smile that only can belong
to those that can say "The usual?" As if they knew it, all along,
What is so very very usual. At least, then,
He would never have to say it when
He orders his vanilla latte in a cardboard cup.
"That measures out my life. That sums it up,"
He thinks, eyeing the plastic coffee spoons.
"It's all due gone too soon, too soon.
The girl will be there, every day,
Regardless of what I ask or say
If I wanted to. Beginning is the hardest part, I know, I know,
But would it hurt to tell her so?"
Her arms are bare to the elbow there
And as she gets his drink, she sees his stare
And is a little flattered, and a little offended.
Would the world explode and land upended
If he commented on the ghastly weather as of late,
Or tell her that he loved her? That it was Fate?
But he will only mumble a thank you and leave a lovely tip
In the jar on the counter. And that is it.

We adore the hour
Of enduring madness
We are crude and cruel
Like tigers in the morning
We are food for the gods
Who stayed too long
And strayed too far
From their solitary pantheons
We are the shadows of Psyche
Tirelessly shorn from our bodies
We are retired armies
These conglomerates of hatred
Fed up with feminine values
We are salivating angst
We are manic depressive virgins
Coercion is comical
This is evil incarnate
Sardonic solitude shrouds You
In it's vision-less vicissitudes
We are used to being used
And fed ignorance like food
We are bored and longing
For some muscles to flex
So we could attest to our problems
I contest your victory
And seek meaning in expression
Anger is reflexive yet still we beg to differ
Our questions rejected
By an authority we entrusted
To naively negate our egos
We collect puzzles and never solve them
We form alliances with psychedelic buffalo
While meditating butterflies chart
Their ancient transmigration patterns
We are pinnacles of virtue in vitriolic prisons
We administer to the needs of the ordinary soldier
We are shouldering too much responsibility
For if you were entrusted with love
Then please don't abuse it
We are bundles of wood
Woven together like fragile tapestries
We are strategies unused
We are moody lovers confused by each other’s apathy
Our lack of touch erupts into violent volcanoes
Spewing fumes in our bedrooms
We are ****** handed
Balancing on our fingertips
While plummeting a thousand feet
To the bottom of endless seas
We are cheap like sheet-rock and shelves
Upended in an earthquake
We are all that we tell each other
We are purely made from stories
Defending our allegorical right to exist
We are so ******* boring
That our own made-up gods
Can do nothing but laugh
At the infinite ignorance of our species
We are a genus of ingenious desperation
Who gave measurement such an important trophy
That we are beyond permanently broken
And can now fatefully begin authentically working
On fixing our sights, minds, hearts
Hands and bodies upon uniting
With our deepest spiritual longing
I gave up stroking my ego a long time before I met you
What’s next will you expect me to beg for your indulgence
We are making amends for the ways
We dissected our reality
It's a tragedy that the objectification of objects
Leads to a such a Complex Elegance:
These isolated sediments are perplexed at our own self-vehemence

What a way to begin
The end of our undoing
Begs for our compassion
We are not allowed to forget
So we go to sleep
And whenever we awake
You immediately take
Our breath away
To protect against
The faintest chance
Or hint of our remembering

Emergent and forming I feel a storm is imploring that soon without any warning you beg to cross a line

Every time, nothing is sacred but sacramental complacence is marked as roles of the shameless

Mean to skip a line another time? Is this too rough and obtuse for a cutie like you to boost the power line?

Number 9, completion is power and stricken chords every hour proceed to timeline devour those daily entities

I do decree that opposition to me is free and withered beatings to meetings, detours and dealings

understanding demands of variable plans is held by the hand that feeds the depleted need

I see it from every angle, the tangle, the multishifted frame though it dangles, I can't be stuck in my own head when

I see the reflections of me in the treasure it jangles, brings into focus where my head fell to float in the

moments set to wrangle, pull it in, dwell upon the good and discard where it hampers new fangled notions like

truth effusions of love and devotion are swallowed up in the daily ocean of noise traffic, the more verbose,

Graphic dispatches matches blasted disasters dashed and rash past distractions amass magic attacks balanced

Secular motion entwined with metaphysical potions, divided what is your quotient? It doesn't add up in this

moment.

Interpersonal, intergalactic, universal assertions disturbed by verbage of outrance

Message mismanaged mischief mallaeble mayhem managed maganamously mallicous mannered when I

would proclaim them. Members materialized meriting masturbatory movements and monetized

malappropriation I have no patience nor pathos for indiscriminant egos demonstrating a tangent as canon and

paralyzing progressions toward psychic visions of heaven, eyes as the cosmos, and pressures upended.

I'll cope with associations disastrous and tainted, but keep in my visage all that scratches my lenses

I know far too much to be content with the situation, but far too little to shatter falsehood's intitiation

My limbs wrested, and extended, towards the heavens
like young children’s hands on the first sunlit days of spring.
The muted grays of winter fade, soon replaced by softer blues.
I still remember the first time I caught wind of you,
your back against my trunk and it lent me your lungs.
I learned to breathe like you too,
in shy and quiet silences while trying not to shake-
the world
but darling you came into mine, trembling fault lines
like an earthquake reading poetry and upended my roots.
I was seduced by you and there was nothing you did,
or could do that would untie this bind we shared
our bodies intertwined, ancient wood and woman
tethered together by the invisible pleasure
of one another’s company.
You spoke to me with feathers
and kissed me with subtle gestures
while I shade you from the sun.
I had never known such a word
but on that summer I called it love
and I believed it to be true
until the day you did not come.
The earth and soil from which I sow
has slowly grown into a prison atop this grassy knoll.
I have become a tree with the memories of a man.

In the shadows of the walls
where laughter once reverberated
as a symphony of gleeful bliss,
intonational inclines arise in the dark
as dancing phantoms haunt
the smirking silence which dissipates
from the splotched, upended floorboards,  
while midnight footprints breathlessly creak,
cradling the demonizing affirmations whispered,
the very ones I knew would never become true.

We stood by, powerlessly spectating
as the love we once shared
gasped for air, red in the face,
its gushing carotid bulging in desperation,
four lungs incinerating themselves
with imminent anticipation
of the death gleaming
just over the horizon,
its violet hues juxtaposing
with the glimmering night skies
of faded constellations comprising the celestial
as moonlit silhouettes waltzed across the water,
a bright cerulean rippling in our presence,
the genesis of a journey unforeseen.

Brutal acceptance rains from my eyes,
a rumbling river that reigns supreme
over the rounded stones stacked high
as a towering dam of branches and rubble,
leftover waste long forgotten and forlorn;
hometown fantasies of childhood memories
linger longer than our lost loyalty,
liberating me from the rusted chains
you'd stapled into my brittle bones,
a leash tied tightly around my throat
to **** me from my courageous caution
back into the splintered wheel
dictating our selfish agendas,
empty promises of dilapidated affirmations
now turned weary and worn
with this newfound sense of reflection,
a dichotomy depicting time's own passage,
the consequence of a metamorphic resolution
of open wounds blossoming into eroded scars.  

Futuristic visions of lesions now mended
seamlessly fuse with renewed self-reception,
your broken promises stitched with the threads
ripped from the capillaries comprising my core,
blood-stained carpet of scarlet and crimson
fading into an aged and weathered maroon,
never truly waning in its acquainted pigment
yet blossoming into a stained fabric
portraying the promises of the past,
of decayed ruins now industriously erected
into a radiant utopia of gallant, rubious valor,
the final product of an unyielding resolve
to have our story rewritten, our own steadfast evolution.

Spiralling the thermals in the wide blue sky
I fell towards a meadow full of flowers
the colours multiplied as I descended
this spinning in a dance
upended    downside up  
upended   downside up

sizzling in the heat of summers day    
I landed in some hay
lay there to meditate on what I should do next
getting quite perplexed   quite perplexed

was it you who came right then
seduced me in my den of corn
the reason why my daughter’s born    
today
is singing in her bed of feathers    
rolling on the floor

picking up and putting down    
picking up and putting down
life is turning round and round
I'll do that till I drown    I drown  
tomorrow    time that doesn't come  
I'll learn to borrow   learn to borrow

thrown about in troubles with my health
never one to come to sudden wealth
crawling through the gates of hell with stealth
never on the shelf    never on the shelf
out the other side where dawn brings in the tide
across the sands of time to touch my toes

what future lies ahead    nobody knows 
no nobody    nobody    nobody    nobody knows.

Margaret Ann Waddicor 16th October 2014.

My Father, who means well, makes me lunch
A man who’s sandwiches could never be
trusted, who used the mossy breadends cause
thats how they did it on the farm but
I am the cry baby who rejects the
deadened bread, dark wilted lettuce spines
lettuce rinds, inedible, unclean
Perspiring, lovingly wrapped in cellophane
And now I’m old enough I must
so carefully control what’s
between my full, whole, mid-loaf slices,
Fret about gluten.
Jesus help me I’m so afraid of
invisible moulds and the taste of iron
in those glossy cylinders of upended campbells
tomato: quivering naked, vermillion in the pan,
like chilled organs they appeared hepatic
I’m sure the milk he adds is soured he
cannot be trusted, my father, but
forgive him he knows not what he does, I
know they didn't have much on the farm I
am spoiled like the milk, too sensitive, I
wilt, because I have become too hard to feed,
we didn't know what to do with this kind of love.

13 years, so many jobs
so many names you half forgot
got caught and collected
                    at the corner of your mouth.

Outside, it's one more night,
one more stitch in this rag doll year
and you can still hear the way she'd
                    try to talk while laughing
any given Sunday night.

Might be you half forgot.
Might be the roaring years
drowned out the hum of their names
in your ears
              earned your stripes, now wear 'em well
spell out your name in snow, then
go lay down in the bed you made.

Outside, it's lights and noise
and visible breath
footbeats on sidewalks,
forgotten names with smokers' coughs
all caught in the roaring tides of
                                                the time.
But it's blood clots inside;
a parenthesized appositive
                      redefining what you lost.

In the clot, one sunk to the silt,
                  to the dregs.
In here, your living room
               is outside the parenthesis,
closed out of the open air.
Spare change beneath the lamp
strangely mocking outside lights,
                 glinting bright,
                    but silent.
                       Inert.

And, just outside,
          those city lights
they flash for others;
those with jobs and funds,
          with lovers,
with smiles still left
                         in the tank.
Not fake ones constructed
by nights getting ****** up
or upended frowns painting
clown faces all pasty--
                 you'll get out.

                You'll make it back;
              black clouds blow past
       and the tide runs out fast. And--
                           lastly?--
    You're made of better stuff than that.

Awash with ***** I peed all over me
   shoes
Well Storm me if I ain't a bad sea
   Captain
I'd had a ton of *** and a whole
   barrel of porter
Now the landlord he's shouting "Last
   Orders"
So where's me Crew, me Swabs, me
   Hearties ?
Yea! where's me Aces and me Deucies
.......Nowhere to be seen, not a one,
Just a pack of feckin' Jokers,
Find me the Fox and show me the
   Shirkers!!!

I'd drunk too much that's what I'd
   done
Well tie me to the mast and chastise    
  me severely for such unseemly
     behaviour
All I wanted, just some fair company, to be lavished by a couple of lovelies
But No! they wouldn't have it,
   wouldn't entertain me
Snobs! Stuck up cows!! *******!!!
We nearly had a Barney
I'd rather wet me ***** in a Jar of
   cold Jellies.

Standing there outside in the cold
   night air
Trying to get me bearings, yea! trying
   to take a reading
Me Northern Star, he must have
   fecked off to the Northern Bar
And my compass, he's whirling
   around like a Dervish,
Well ***** me sausage in a jar of
   malt vinegar
We're sailing blind tonight me boys
Keep a sharp lookout atop of the
   Crow's Nest won't ya!

And so, we ventured out, a brave man
With ***** as big as the bold Hercules
   himself
A wee bit tentative at first I'd concede
Lurching about from side to side, all
   over the place
But not to worry, with me there at the
   helm, both hands on the wheel
Solid and salty as any old sea dog
Singing away to meself a wee shanty
" I'm no landlubber me!
  Just give me the dark and the rolling
    sea"
Steady as she goes me Hearties!
I thought we was doin' alright till one
   of my feet
It trod in a space with nothing there
   in it
And my Ship it goes tumbling
   sideways over
Hell's britches!!! I'd trod in a pothole
   the size of a manhole
"Man the lifeboats Lads, we're going
   over" I cried.

Next thing I know I'm lying on my
   back
And the Moon she's blowin' me kisses
And at the end of the Bar, there! me
   Northern Star
And Him smokin' a cigar and sippin'
   Brandy with some *******
Looking like a Dandy at Christmas
"Hey Judas!" I shouts over, "where's
   me monkey?"

And then suddenly, this woman, this
   woman out of nowhere
Out of the darkness, this Spectre
An old Sea Witch for sure, by thunder
She starts bawling laughing at me and
   pointing her crooked finger,
Well dent me dagger on a cold
   woman's heart
If she doesn't cut the legs right out
   from under me
Every time she opens her big Gob, the
   squeals of her
Makes me feel two feet tall she does
   with her cruel laughin' & sneery
       banter
And her drawin' a big crowd around
   her
(And me! a Giant!!.... a feckin' Whale, a
   Walrus!!).

Well lash me Luger and wake me up
   with a poker
I wasn't wobbling, that was just me
   swagger,
And I ain't lying down here no longer
   either
Heave ** the ropes me lads and haul
   me up me Hearties
Till I stand once more at a proper
   angle,
Yea! Hoist me up like a mast and watch me sails billow again in the
   breeze
Watch me belly bulge out and me eyes
   roll around in me head
Now we're back afloat, buckle up me
   sword on me belt
And roll out me cannons
For the name of this ship, if it isn't the
   Great, the "Great Defiant ",
By the two Horns on Hell's Gate
What am I doing here at all in this
   place, with ye folk
I'll wave me ***** at this world, yea! I'll dangle me dibbler
Did ye not hear, did no one tell ye
I'm off yea! I'm off to Australia.

                       II

For Sweet Destiny, she visited me this
   night, she kissed me
She came like a gypsy when I was a bit
   tipsy
So exotic with all her bangles and
   beads and her charms
And dresses all the colours of the
   rainbow
With her big crystal ball eyes of grey
Like the Moon she mesmerized me
   completely
And then she kissed me with lips
   sweet as whiskey
And she whispered in my ear a magic
   word. " Australia ".

You see this was how it was
I read it some place,seen it somewhere
A sweet wee lass, a fellow girl poet
   from Australia
She said, she lamented " Poetry, it isn't
   very big over here
The people their not inclined, their not
   of that mind"
Said I aghast, I'll change their hearts
Their hardheaded folk, those folk
   down there
It must be the snakes and the spiders
   down the toilet
So hoist me up onto me pulpit
Them heathen folk they need
   convertin' badly.

O! Give me a Ship, give me a Galley
And like Columbus I'll start a big
   rumpus
We'll sail off over the horizon, and
   keep turning on the globe
Till we sight the shores of that Sweet
    Island
And that lovely Queen of the South
   reclining
Beautiful and wonderful Australia!!!

There's gold in their hearts even
   though they may not know it
And jewels in their eyes big as
   diamonds
Treasures by the thousand
So hoist up me trousers boys,
Me! I'm off to Sligo
Wait a minute, No! No I'm not,
I'm off.... off to Australia.

So gimme a wooden leg and hoist me
   parrot up onto me shoulder
Arrrr! Jim lad.....now where's me
   soldiers
Are ye with me lads
We'll plow through the sharky seas
Then I'll plant me flag on their
   beaches
And claim this Land for Posey.... yea!
   for Poetry,
And if they don't like it
If they string me up by the ***** and
   spit on me
Sure I'll just smile back at them and
   tell them
"I'm just..... I'm just Jim Dandy".

                       III

Alas! It wasn't to be, next morning
   they found me
Upended in someone's garden
The Sergeant he shook me, " What are
   you doing down there? " he said,
"Ahoy there shipmate Sir" says I, like a
   true shipwrecked sailor,
"I had me a dream last night,
I dreamt...I dreamt I were bound,
   bound for Australia.

Feed to me a current so that I may have an adversary

It’ll help carry the bones home when our wars are done

Remembering how we’d dislodged our lives

Torn them clean from the earth

Stolen to ***** cairns too tall to climb

Even for nimble us

Allow me then to stack my bricks up against yours

Measure if you must

They can topple continuously 

Mine were bound to from birth

Build with them a wall against which I can press

In my very own war

Crumble the pieces into a fine powder

To be blown out of hand and spun
 into a wind-turned eye

Call it salt and litter our croplands with it

It is standard procedure

That nothing lives long enough to learn how to mock itself

Watch it slip from your hands 

Watch the line slip from mine

No chance of less slack on my own volition 

Better a contained current in some watery recess
Than a fought one upended in thundering torrents
Better to quell the urge to hurl oneself toward it 

Than to hold taut a line tied to a drowning stone

Dicontained, uprooted from
origins and disbelongings
stowed stored
in hermetic containers
stacked by soul-less rows
in the dead cold night,
transiting to upended lands.

Inside, a monocular view:
ironed pillars, art-palm,
disinteresting shots framed
of distant falls,
as luggage tumbles off
the conveyor creaking
tired from endless
circumambulations of the
graveyard of emotions, where
day on day, hopes, loves,
dreams, die, unwaved for.
Welcome - to neverneverland.

Seconds tick by
Quicksand-slow
Time inches forward
But I can't tell
Slow down or speed up?
I can't make up my mind
I can't wait for tomorrow
But I'm running out of time
Bittersweet time
My fear and my foe
Longing for the simpler days
Longing for a home
Waiting for everything
And nothing at all
Today we may fly
And tomorrow we fall
Temporary permanence
To stay or to go?
Eerything matters
And nothing does too
One love dies
And another one blooms
Equilibrium off-kilter
And balance upended
One thing begins
Because another one's ended
Nothing's forever
Everything's eternal
Contradictory agreement
And heavenly hell
Squalid splendor
And honest lies
What happens to the universe
When forever dies?

We
were kings
in the realm
of distorted things
Indulging in unmitigated lust that it brings.

She
was queen
A pillar
of strength incarnate
busy pillaging the futures of lesser beings.

The moments I lied
the dreams
the spies
tongues untied
The kingdom crumbled.

Walls I built
Accounts
the cries
threats of love
and roots upended.

Spirals speak before they're worded.
Now the future is in the rear-view.

i.
You’ve struggled and grappled and fought, but it all seems for nothing, because here you are, locked in your bathroom, falling to spectacular pieces.

Your heart is a bullet flying out of your chest and your face has never been so bleak, so blank, and your shampoo bottle has been upended, oozing everywhere, and you should really start cleaning it up, but you can’t. You can’t put out another fire, mend another broken thing. Your machinery has come to an end. You’ve run out of fuel, and, to be frank, you have been running on empty for far longer than you should.

This is the result.

You: Alone.
You: Kneecaps hitting ceramic tile.
You: Leaning over that porcelain rim, steadying yourself, readying yourself.
You: Pawing crazily through the mess in your drawers, looking for something sharp.
You: Pushing your hair out of your face, fingers all clenched but the index, which is extended, trembling toward your open mouth.
You: Sliding the plastic sheath from a razor.
You: Lurching forward as bile floods your throat.
You: Pressing metal into your skin, and deeper, and deeper, and—

(Nobody tells you what it will feel like when you reach the point of no return.)

ii.
Sickness likes to romanticize destruction, especially that of the self-inflicted sort. It’s a nauseating satisfaction, a bizarre high. Your clouded perception goes along with this fairytale, believing in the power of the blade, the food you expel, the food you don’t let yourself eat, the isolation.

Sickness convinces you that this and only this will make you right again. It eats you out and leaves you hemorrhaging, and when you gather enough strength to feebly resurrect yourself, the cycle repeats and you go under, victim to a poison as grotesque and unending as Dante’s Seven Circles of Hell.

You do try, at least at first, to stay normal. You cast about for a distraction, and maybe you find one. Maybe it’s that rocket-hearted boy, or anything fatty and sweet, or the internet and all these strangers you pour your secrets into, or the contents of your father’s liquor cabinet, but there’s always something, isn’t there?

Funny how inevitably it leaves a sour aftertaste. Funny how inevitably you fall, sinking like a bird with an arrow struck through it, lost.

iii.
You once learned about creation.

How all matter exploded into existence in a single bang, how the solar system burned to life, how planets formed from colliding asteroids, how every creature that has ever been since is made with dust left over from the formation of galaxies, how you and I are the flesh and heartbeat echo of the universe.

You once wore daisy chains and called yourself extraordinary.

Now you call yourself a waste of ******* oxygen and forget, dear human, that you are a meaningful part of this totality.

Consider this when despair comes for you. Grit your teeth and hold onto something and remember, remember, that you did not always feel this way. Call to mind the image of your little kid self, your missing teeth self, your loud laughter self, because if you take that piece of sharp metal and puncture your skin, if you ***** your breakfast, you are going to annihilate her.

If you keep choosing this, you’re going to be bleeding out on the floor someday when your mother walks in and sees you and cries out.
“What have you done to my little girl?” she’s going to ask, hysterical, reaching for you.

And you’ll look at her, eyes snapping and full of something frenzied and disastrous, and say, “I killed her,” and the whole world will wonder why they didn’t recognize the signs sooner.

Is this what you want?

iv.
There’s a little poem I keep close to my soul, which says, “You must set out to save the only life you can save,” meaning your own.

Meaning you have to stop this. Meaning put down your weapon. Meaning breathe.



v.**
Nobody tells you what it feels like to face yourself post-battle. There’s not a great deal of advice on how to be an elegant example of life after, so you feel very much on your own here. It’s hard to go on after talking yourself down from so many roofs. Everything is struck with a certain silence, and you realize this tumor was filling so many hollow places in you that you don’t quite know what to do with the emptiness yet.

Be patient. One day, this blank space will be bursting with flowers and firelight and a rising, beating love.

You cannot give up. Not yet.

Shadow, you *******;
bead box upended,
a galaxy of beads beckon feline eye;
you’d choke in your bliss
for cheap plastic pieces.
Your toys remain unchewed, dusty;
my pens remain missing, useless.
Four a.m. is for sleeping, not eating;
I slam the door,
no longer listening;
your crying piercing my brain,
deep as the bead nestled in your throat;
They’re never the same again
once the damage sets in;
the special diet,
medication tucked in cheese;
hairballs requiring the kittie-Heimlich,
like squeezing a black, furry accordion;
and then it is I who cries
for forgiveness.

Today drunks got up,
on an upended axis.

And wobbled
on driven souls,
driven to ****
and let the hate loose.

A drunk walked in mud
to work,
and his boss sported a smile
of sad pride.

He had done a great job,
and no one knew.

When they were sitting down
on the couch,
cracking the air with laughter,
the country man
looked up
and saw
a daughter of light on the floor,
slitted through the blinds.

He wanted so badly
to cry.
But didn't.

An imp limped
upstairs
and down, back again
to the basement,
and his old ma
heard him sparingly.

So much happened to day,
so beautifully
sad,
clear, and azure,
that the masks
of nails
spiking our faces,
slowly wore down
against steel skin.

When the sun went down,
aching for pain again,
they took the first swig,
then a second.